Word: pies
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fair in the true sense of the word, complete with helium balloons, popcorn, prizes, and bushel-baskets of apples. But its workers were dressed in pin-striped suits, not overalls, and fairgoers were more interested in information technology than apple pie...
...York City with the Israel Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, 68, unveiled his high-spirited Jubilee Games. In Miami, Elliott Carter, 77, heard the Composers Quartet chart his latest passage through twelve-tone thickets in his String Quartet No. 4. And in Philadelphia, there was the premiere of Queenie Pie, a little-known "street opera" by Duke Ellington. Rarely has the breadth, diversity and achievement of American composers been in such abundant evidence during so short a period of time...
...first glance Queenie Pie hardly seems the stuff from which either operas or hit musicals are made. In storied Harlem, an annual beauty contest for hairdressers is under way, and the proud, haughty Queenie Pie (Teresa Burrell) is on the verge of her 13th consecutive title. Unexpectedly, she is challenged by an upstart from New Orleans, the leggy Cafe Olay (Patty Holley), and is forced to examine her arid life. There is an extended dream sequence on a mythic island, during which Queenie Pie discovers where her heart really lies. At the end, victorious, she magnanimously gives up her crown...
Originally envisioned as a work for television, Queenie Pie was left incomplete at Ellington's death in 1974. In putting it on the stage, the American Music Theater Festival had to play Rimsky-Korsakov to Ellington's Mussorgsky. Ellington's original libretto was recast by George C. Wolfe, the tunes were fitted with new words by George David Weiss, and the score was reworked by Conductor (and sometime Ellington collaborator) Maurice Peress under the supervision of the composer's son Mercer. The trick was to minimize the book's implausibilities while making the most of the score's seductive melodies...
...delicious. From the opening, on- your-toes Harlem Scat, through the kick-up-your-heels flapper dance of The Hairdo Hop, past the wild jungle dance of Stix, round the sultry, smoky bend of A Blues for Two Women and back home to Harlem for the finale, Queenie Pie is unmistakably the work of the grand Duke. In the pit, the Duke Ellington Orchestra steps through the score's uptown opulence with high style, trumpets growling and keyboards swinging, while onstage, members of Director-Choreograp her Garth Fagan's Bucket Dance Theater juke and okeydoke their way through kinetic, hyperactive...